Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Did Twitter push the Pope off the pulpit?

"Yes, I did shut it down and reboot ... You know what? Forget it. I'm heading up to my papal studio ... to WRITE!"

The arc of Pope Benedict XVI’s Twitter
feed offers some tantalizing clues about his relationship with the
Internet in the weeks before he resigned. The first pontiff to tweet, His
Holiness seemed relatively detached from the medium and his audience, save a
couple of endearing exceptions. It was as though tweeting was yet another box
to check on his Holy to-do list.

Quite understandable. He was, after
all, 85 years old when he sent his first tweet on December 12. Like most of us
he started strong, sending out seven tweets that day alone, but his tweeting
petered out as the novelty wore off and the burden of producing wore on.

He was also much more scholarly than
he was social. The Wall Street Journal described him as “a pope of the pen, holing
up in the papal studio where he produced tomes on the life of Jesus Christ.”

His predecessor John Paul II, on the
other hand, was a natural at social media, truly deserving the title of “the
first Internet-savvy pope.” As far back as 2002, John Paul II extolled the
virtues of the Internet and offered startlingly clear guidance on how to make
the most of it.

In his message to commemorate World
Communication Day 2002, Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “The Internet can offer
magnificent opportunities for evangelization if used with competence and a clear
awareness of its strengths and weaknesses. Above all, by providing information
and stirring interest it makes
possible an initial encounter with the Christian message.”

Unfortunately, this does not come
naturally to most of us. “Living online,” even sporadically, is an incredible
societal transformation, truly Darwinian in scope. Those of us who will survive
and thrive in this new environment either are—or will become—storytellers.